Thursday, February 19, 2009

Eric Holder's Chickens Come Home to Roost

Attorney General Eric Holder received a lot attention for calling the United States "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race relations. He claims that most Americans avoid discussion of lurking racial issues.

In a speech to a group of Justice Department employees that marked Black History Month, Holder said businesses are largely integrated but Americans still divide themselves along racial lines in their private lives.

Stripped bare, it's the traditional liberal pablum, a policy prescription that translates to blind support for phony "profiling" studies and illegal immigration.

• Police stop and arrest blacks at disproportionate rates because of racism • Blacks are disproportionately in prison because of racism • Blacks are failing in school because of racist inequities in school funding • The black poverty rate is the highest in the country because of racism • Blacks were given mortgages that they couldn’t afford because of racism

But facts are stubborn things.

Consider that, of 23 peer-reviewed U.S. studies since 2000, 20 found that family structure directly affects crime and/or delinquency. Most research "strongly suggests both that young adults and teens raised in single-parent homes are more likely to commit crimes, and that communities with high rates of family fragmentation (especially unwed childbearing) suffer higher crime rates as a result."

One study that ran more than two decades found that nearly 90% of the change in violent crime rates can be attributed to the change in percentages of out-of-wedlock births. Conversely, divorce rates had no relationship with crime.

In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead noted that the "relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature. The nation's mayors, as well as police officers, social workers, probation officers, and court officials, consistently point to family break up as the most important source of rising rates of crime."

Got that, Holder? Control for single-parent families and there are no differences between the races when it comes to crime.

One study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.

Research for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed that a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of combined AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 117 percent increase in the crime rate among young black men.

In 1995, Dr. Patrick Fagan wrote a seminal summary of the situation: "Over the past thirty years, the rise in violent crime parallels the rise in families abandoned by fathers... High-crime neighborhoods are characterized by high concentrations of families abandoned by fathers... The rate of violent teenage crime corresponds with the number of families abandoned by fathers... Neighborhoods with a high degree of religious practice are not high-crime neighborhoods... Even in high-crime inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable homes do not become delinquents. By contrast only 10 percent of children from unsafe, unstable homes in these neighborhoods avoid crime... Criminals capable of sustaining marriage gradually move away from a life of crime after they get married."

Author Robert Rector argued that "[f]or thirty years, the welfare system has paid for non­work and non­marriage and has achieved massive increases in both." Rector noted that when New Jersey began denying increases in cash welfare benefits to single mothers who have additional children while on welfare, out-of-wedlock births decreased 10% with no increase in abortions.

Glorification of single-parent households: During a 1994 commencement address at George Washington University First Lady Hillary Clinton stated, "If it ever did, [the American family] no longer does consist of two parents, a dog, a house with a white picket fence, and a station wagon in the driveway."

Research shows that tax and transfer programs have a direct effect on marital stability. Financial stress contributes heavily to family problems, including marital difficulties that can lead to divorce. Therefore, tax policies that penalize married couples by increasing their tax liabilities, contribute directly to the breakdown of families.

Tax policies of the 1940s provided a family-oriented tax structure which preceded the sustained prosperity and social stability of the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time period, the rate of divorce actually declined.

Social researcher Allan Carlson proposed a variety of pro-­family tax policies, saying "a tax code recognizes that tax structure does influence human behavior. It would help children and strengthen families."

Other experts have offered a series of legislative proposals that strengthen the family, including: (a) identifying every child's father, by having states ensure that a document exists at birth to identify the name and social security number of both parents; (b) forcing fathers to take responsibility for their children through programs like Charles Ballard's National Institute for Responsible Fatherhood, in which fathers are strongly encouraged to legitimate their children, attend school, and find gainful employment; (c) rescind no-­fault divorce laws for parents with children; and (d) eradicate the destructive incentives of the welfare system.

So what does the Obama administration do?

Buried deep inside the massive spending orgy that Democrats jammed through the House this week lie five words that could drastically undo two decades of welfare reforms.

The very heart of the widely applauded Welfare Reform Act of 1996 is a cap on the amount of federal cash that can be sent to states each year for welfare payments.

But, thanks to the simple phrase slipped into the legislation, the new "stimulus" bill abolishes the limits on the amount of federal money for the so-called Emergency Fund, which ships welfare cash to states.

"Out of any money in the Treasury of the United States not otherwise appropriated, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary for payment to the Emergency Fund," Democrats wrote in Section 2101 on Page 354 of the $819 billion bill. In other words, the only limit on welfare payments would be the Treasury itself.

In other words, while Holder and Obama construct racist straw-men and then knock them down with powerful, pointless blows, the Democrat establishment has simultaneously set the stage for more single-parent families and more violent crime.